


White Noise

by bastilas



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, I Blame Colin Farrell For This, Past Torture, This isn't happy, Why Did I Write This?, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 14:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10538088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastilas/pseuds/bastilas
Summary: Buried six feet under, Percival Graves knows he'll never see the blue sky again.________________Based off of Colin Farrell's really morbid theory





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing in present tense, which I thought better suited this one-shot. If there's any mistakes in tense, I'm sorry, third person is usually my go-to. 
> 
> Also, this is the most emo story I've ever written, and I blame Colin for it.

Buried six feet under, Percival Graves knows he'll never see the blue sky again.

The darkness is all encompassing. It's suffocating. It's scary. Not many things could claim to scare Graves in his lifetime, but his earthy grave certainly does. 

At first he convinces himself all will be well; Grindelwald is just using this as another form of torture, and he'll be back with that menacing smile, laughing at Graves. Everything is okay, he repeats to himself.

_Everything is not okay._

Not even twenty minutes in, Graves lets the panic set it. Perhaps in another life, one where Grindelwald hadn't spent the months prior torturing him, fraying and exposing every nerve, damaging Graves' body, then Graves would have a different mindset. A more rational one that would allow for him to form a plan and escape the wooden coffin. 

Instead, he settles for banging on the cover, scratching at it until he has splinters under his fingernails and the skin is scraped raw and bleeding. The pain doesn't matter anymore. Not now that Grindelwald is off galavanting around with his face, doing Merlin knows what. 

Graves failed his duty as Director of Magical Security. Let the psychopathic terrorist take his place, let him infiltrate MACUSA, let him steal their secrets and trick them all. 

It's what they get for not noticing the darkest wizard in the world is right beneath their noses, playing them all for fools. Maybe it's a bit harsh of him to think so, they were his friends, co-workers and family even. He spent hours around them, years of his life; they don't deserve to be played by Grindelwald anymore than he did. And yet...

He just can't fathom how they fail to notice he's missing. He'd spent hours wishing they would. Not after spending so much time at the end of Grindelwald's wand, screaming and pleading, thinking in the darkest recesses of his mind that it'd be better to die.

Graves always thought he'd live out his life into a quiet retirement, or at the very least, go out fighting. He would've never imagined he'd meet his end in the ground. He laughs to himself in a morbid and manic sort of way. Percival _Graves_ dying in a grave. It's fitting, he thinks.

The laughing gives way into hysteria quickly. The wooden sides of the coffin suddenly feeling as though they're closing in on him, about to collapse and kill him right then. It's all he can think, all he can _feel_ with the darkness taking away his sight, heightening his other senses.

He feels the wood of the coffin, the pain in his hands, the smell of dirt. A smell he once liked, before it became his tomb, sealing him into the ground.

With no foreseeable way out, Graves tries his magic, something that has not responded to him since Grindelwald has taken him captive. 

He tries expulso, reducto, _anything_ that would stop the darkness. Of course, his magic does not respond. He's too drained, his mind in piecesー _shattered_. He can't piece together the director of magical security. Instead, he's just Percival, and he's a dead man.

In another fit of gasping breaths, he wonders if Picquery and the others will realize far too late. By then Grindelwald will have succeeded and Graves would be the ultimate failure. His bitterness and anger towards them not knowing fades. He remembers the true enemy, the man who caused it all in the first place. The one who said _"I'll save them the trouble of burying you, don't worry."_ before it all went black.

Graves screams in anger, he curses Grindelwald, still short of breath from his racing heart and mind. In the back of his mind, he knows that breathing the way he does is only shortening his already limited time on earth, and yet he cannot help himself. 

He knows that Grindelwald won't be coming back, that this time it's no illusion, no grand play by Grindelwald. He has an undetermined amount of time left to live, alone in the dark.

It's warm in the coffin now, and Graves feels like he's spent days in it when in reality, it's been an hour. He's gone through every range of emotion so quickly that he's overwhelmed, his mind reeling in a whirlwind of panicked thoughts.

He tries to regain control of his wayward mind.

He can't.

It's too difficult to focus himself, to root out anxieties and think rationally. Grindelwald had already broken his mind too much for that to be possible. 

He resigns himself to his fate. Letting his chest rise and fall rapidly.

He thinks, for all the wonder magic can bring, why can't it work when he needs it most in his life? What had been the point of practicing wandless magic, of working tirelessly for years to perfect itーonly for it to be absent in his time of need.

Oxygen is becoming scarce for him now, breathing becoming difficult and he feels as though he's run a marathon, but the air isn't there to catch at the end. It's thin and not sustainingーstaleーtainted by the smell of dirt.

So finally, he cries, because there is nothing he can do. It feels as though the world outside his grave is about to end at the hands of a madman, and he can do nothing to stop it because he's underground in a stupid box made for dead people.

He's not dead. But he might as well be. _He will be._

He knows that he won't be awake when he dies, that he'll fall unconscious from the lack of air first. It's the only comfort he has, as he struggles to bring in enough air.

As he takes his last few rugged breaths in. All he can hear is white noise. A ringing that doesn't stopーhe can't run from it. 

As his eyes close for the last time, he doesn't know what will become of himself, or if he'll ever be found.

There's just white noise.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't just straight up say he died in the end oops. It's all open to your interpretation


End file.
